ciples_ he argues that all causation arises immediately out
of existence as such, or, as he states it, that 'uniformity of law
inevitably follows from the persistence of force.' For 'if in any two
cases there is exact likeness not only between those most conspicuous
antecedents which we distinguish as the causes, but also between those
accompanying antecedents which we call the conditions, we cannot affirm
that the effects will differ, without affirming either that some force
has come into existence or that some force has ceased to exist. If the
co-operative forces in the one case are equal to those in the other,
each to each, in distribution and amount; then it is impossible to
conceive the product of their joint action in the one case as unlike
that in the other, without conceiving one or more of the forces to have
increased or diminished in quantity; and this is conceiving that force
is not persistent.'

Now this interpretation of causality as the immediate outcome of
existence must be considered first as a theory of causation, and next as
a theory in relation to Theism. As a theory of causation it has not met
with the approval of mathematicians, physicists, or logicians, leading
representatives of all these departments of thought having expressly
opposed it, while, so far as I am aware, no representative of any one of
them has spoken in its favour[23]. But with this point I am not at
present concerned, for even if the theory were admitted to furnish a
full and complete explanation of causality, it would still fail to
account for the harmonious relation of causes, or the fact with which we
are now alone concerned. This distinction is not perceived by the
anonymous author 'Physicus,' who, in his _Candid Examination of Theism_,
lays great stress upon Mr. Spencer's theory of causation as subversive
of Theism, or at least as superseding the necessity of theistic
hypothesis by furnishing a full explanation of the order of Nature on
purely physical grounds. But he fails to perceive that even if Mr.
Spencer's theory were conceded fully to explain all the facts of
causality, it would in no wise tend to explain the cosmos in which these
facts occur. It may be true that causation depends upon the 'persistence
of force': it does not follow that all manifestations of force should on
this account have been directed to occur as they do occur. For, if we
follow back any sequence of physical causation, we soon find that it
spreads o